Digital TV Converter Box, ATSC Tv Tuner - ZJBOX for Analog HDTV Live 1080P with Recording&Playback,HDMI Output, Timer Setting Tuner Function Digital Channel Free

I bought two of these a year ago. I use them to watch TV on computer monitors and old analog TVs. I have an HDTV modulator so I can send my living room signal all over the house, usually from a satellite receiver. I have a 3-TV "man cave" setup for watching basketball, or for watching the news. I can patch one of the Z-JBox receivers into one of the TVs to get a game from a broadcast station. Sometimes the only way to get a WNBA game with Caitlin Clark is to use this receiver with my rotating TV antenna to pick up the signal from a station 100 miles away from us. The Z-JBox is more sensitive than most of the TVs in the house, and is equal to the best TVs in the house. One other thing I like about it is I can manually find a station after it has auto-scanned. That way, I can auto-scan to get most of the stations, then rotate the antenna to a different location, and manually add a new station without erasing all the other stations. These receivers are easy to use, have a good picture, and you can even record programs on a thumb drive and play the files back on a PC. My dog chewed up one of the remotes when we were gone too long. It was OK because I had the other remote, and I was able to save the IR codes into my universal remote in the living room. Then, a week ago, we had a horrible thunderstorm. Lots of lightning and thunder. The power went down for 3 hours and came back on for short glitches 3 different times. One of the Z-JBoxes quit working. I'm not sure if it was the lightning or the power surges. Nothing else was damaged, including the video monitor it was plugged into. They are so inexpensive, so I ordered a third one, and it came from Amazon in less than 24 hours. Now I have two remotes and two working Z-JBoxes again!

Very surprised at how well this works. Imagine rabbit ears on the roof giving you HD quality picture and sound. I bought the small antennae as well. I bought this ZJBOX digital TV converter to get local programming, and it’s been a solid purchase. Right away, it felt like good value for money considering everything it can do. The picture quality is clear in 1080p, and I’m pulling in a surprisingly good range of over-the-air channels with a basic antenna. Setup was straightforward, and the overall ease of use is WAY better than I expected. The menu system is simple, and the control buttons on both the box and the remote are responsive and clearly labeled. I also like the timer settings for auto shutoff and scheduled recording—it’s very convenient. Recording to a USB drive works well, and while this unit doesn’t rely heavily on wireless connectivity, it does exactly what it’s meant to do without complications. The USB charging capability for powered storage devices is a nice bonus and worked without issues for me. Overall, this converter box does its job reliably, has useful features like recording and playback, and feels well thought out. If you’re looking to get free digital channels without paying for cable, this is a solid option.

So I thought for the price of this I would give it a try. I have been wanting the ability to DVR shows that I like for some time - notably Jeopardy - when conflicts keep me from watching them This little box works for that and works fairly well. That said - here are some negatives... The remote is not intuitive - button layout is terrible. The remote overlaps functions with our Roku remote so certain buttons - notably the Up Arrow can't be used because they also cause something to change on the TV set. The buttons on the remote are tiny and close together - I have large hands so it is difficult to hit the correct button sometimes. The box itself is very light weight and the heavy duty cables between the antenna and it and it and the set totally overwhelm it. It is hard to position on a shelf or mantle. The picture quality of a recording is not the best - it isn't terrible but it isn't digital quality. When the box is on (and recording) it does not pass the antenna signal through to the TV via the antenna cable very well. It provides a great picture through the HDMI cable, but limits the quality of the signal to the antenna port on the TV. When the box is off the antenna signal to the TV is unaffected.

I had to get this Tuner as the TV I got for the bedroom I found out later that it did not have a tuner!!! it had everything else in the world, but I guess they figured everyone is on cable or something and it was on sale for over 150.00 off! now I know why! NO Tuner got to read the small print! LOL!!! So, I figured no problem I would just buy one of these ZJBOX and it worked just great! I have satellite but I like watching the local channels sometimes and this worked great! BUT! They only last about a year! I have bought lots of these now figure about 1 a year and from other retailers not just Amazon! I even got a 3-year warrantee on the last one but cannot find the company! (Big Surprise!!!) Nothing against Amazon or the other stores but it is just not well made! I have about 8 of these duds now and I have been hoping the TV would have died by now so I could get a New one WITH A TUNER!!! LOL!!! The other thing is your supposed to be able to record TV shows etc. and I have never gotten that to work on any of them and I didn't care as I did not need it, I think you have to have a certain kind of memory stick in order for that to work? But as a Tuner for an old analog TV or as in my case I needed one? they work just great until they don't! No warning you turn it off one day and that's it! It will never come back on! I did get almost 2 years out of one by not leaving it ON! whenever I turn OFF the TV, I unplugged it! Like you can put it in stand-by but it's still ON! and if you leave power to it? Well, most times it lasts less than a year! But when it's working it works great! I got ALL the local channels! So... I'm buying another one?! fortunately they are not too expensive! The TV is just great! I could have bought a new one for all of these tuners! But now it's become a test of wills! VISO makes a tuff TV!!! Hope you have better luck then I did? Best of luck. RD...

Works as expected. I could not have this in a closed room with no windows in the basement. It would not trasmit that way, so had to pull it out and point it towards a window.

These were all the rage in the 00's when broadcast was moving to digital, but now there's a whole new reason to pick one of these up. If you have a dual-monitor setup for your computer or, if your main monitor has a picture-in-picture feature like my Ben-Q graphics display, you can have broadcast TV running while you're working if you have a spare HDMI input. The setup on the ZJBOX was very easy. I connected it to a local antenna (I'm using an inexpensive, compact one I picked up here). If your display has built-in speakers, audio will play over HDMI or use the stereo outputs to connect them to another audio device. (Note that you may have to change the audio setting from PCM to Raw to get good sound) The reception, in terms of the number of local channels it can find and receive clearly, is far better than an older, 7" TV I'd been using before I tried this. The setup is pretty easy, though it took a bit to figure out the audio clarity situation, and the onboard software is nicely designed and quite sophisticated. It even picks up the time from the broadcast signal. The picture is absolutely beautiful. If you are just moving from cable to local broadcast, you'll be amazed to see what uncompressed, broadcast HD *really* looks like. This is a great and useful buy even if you just want to sometimes just watch the news or a sports event while you're working!

I am using the ZJBOX Digital TV converter box with my ancient (23 y/o) 50” 1080i NEC plasma screen monitor to pull in OTA channels utilizing a roof mounted VHF/UHF Yagi antenna as my monitor still works like new and is also sometimes still used as a large screen monitor for my laptop (laptop is connected via VGA and the ZJBOX is connected with component to the plasma monitor since the old style HDMI input on the monitor would need an additional dongle to hook up to the converter box which has the newer smaller style HDMI output jack). As a side note, it is absolutely amazing how much technology has advanced and how much prices have come down (my 50” NEC 1080i, not even 1080p, plasma monitor was $12,000 23 years ago with no tuner, and I just bought a 4k 75” microLED smart TV for under $1000 😮!). Audio goes to a 7.1 channel home theater Denon A/V receiver via L/R coax RCA on the converter box. Picture quality (even at 1080i) on the plasma is excellent although some of the settings on the plasma were adjusted (brightness, contrast, gray/white level curves, etc) for the best possible image. Audio output is also very good with the Denon doing the surround processing. Out of the box, the image was clear but somewhat “muted” in impact on the major HD OTA channels grabbed by the converter box. Even though I live in a hilly canyon area, since my outdoor antenna is mounted on a second floor roof, the converter box was actually able to pull in OTA channels just as well as my new large screen smart TVs (about 125 channels!) so the converter box gets 5 stars for its ability to scan and pull in channels, although I only keep about 9-10 of the digital HD channels on my favorites list. Speaking of the “Favorites” list, the UI, although fully functional, is somewhat “clunky” and outdated in appearance. The provided printed manual is not particularly well detailed in how to navigate the converter box, although anyone with just a rudimentary amount of experience with various UI’s can easily figure out the menus with some trial and error exploration. Compared to some of the slightly even lower priced converter boxes available, I liked that this one has a metal housing (there are a number of reviews of other boxes that state that overheating is one suspected mode of failure of those other boxes, many of which are housed in plastic boxes). This one seems to be well made (for a relatively low priced converter box) and comes in a metal case which appears to have reasonable air circulation vents. Because cooling is passive and not active cooling, there is no fan noise which is a plus as due to the IR sensor being located on the front panel with no plug-in provision for a wired extended IR sensor, this converter box will likely be placed within line of sight next to your TV or monitor. To get around this, I placed my converter box into a my enclosed A/V closet for a nice neat, hidden install, and utilize a RF transmitter in the converter box remote control (the rechargeable type that replaces one of the AAA batteries in the remote) so that I do not have to have line of sight for remote control. I use a RF to IR remote control extender made by Next Generation for this. The converter box is quite responsive to the remote control and I like the convenience of not having to point the remote towards the converter box and not having to have a box sitting next to the monitor with exposed cables (good for the WAF 😂). I assume that all the internal electronic tuner/converter chips are pretty much the same between all these low priced Chinese converter boxes as the pictures of the UI on all these low priced boxes are the same so I went with this one specifically due to it having a metal housing (I set up a small DC computer fan next to the unit to prevent any overheating, although I did not notice any excess heat coming off the the box even before setting up the fan. Another reason impacting my choice of this unit over the others was that it also had component outputs in addition tot he HDMI and composite outputs (some of the lesser priced ones had only HDMI and composite outputs). For those of you connecting this to an older analogue TV with an analogue tuner and no composite, HDMI nor component inputs, there is also a coax antenna pass through on the back of the unit. So, overall, I am very pleased with this unit and give it 5 stars, especially considering its very low price. Only time will tell if the unit holds up but in the meantime it has allowed me to continue to use my plasma screen for a very low price as an OTA TV in addition as a large computer monitor (only about a $40 investment to keep a $12,000 screen working 😝)!

The Zj Box DEC 1668 digital tuner is very easy to hook up and pulls in plenty of stations with the inexpensive indoor antenna I am using. The signal amplifier does seem to work, as many stations showing no signal or pixelated come in well when it is on. The glaring deficiencies with this rascal are the amazingly poor instruction 'manual' (that lacks almost any instructions, is inconsistent with itself and which I was unable to locate online) and the clunky software that is difficult to use e.g. requires multiple steps to add favorites which is frequently vanish anyway. Another issue for me was finding the model number, which is not on the box and is printed on the unit in extra super tiny font. The unit does have a signal strength indicator, but not sure how accurate it is because it seems to sometimes work independent of other activity. Bottom line: this unit is so far grabbing signals well, but the user interface is clunky and opaque.